On July 4th, 2006, I embarked on a quest to become the pre-eminent American portrait painter of the 21st century. This blog chronicles that journey. With apologies to Joan Didion, I call it THE YEAR OF MAGICAL PAINTING.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

The 2nd Amendment is a Funny Thing.

It does guarantee the right to bear arms, at least within certain limits, yet it says nothing about discarding cigarette butts wherever one has a mind to. A failing, to my mind, because as near as I can tell, people -- smokers -- feel like they have an absolute constitutional right to just throw the damned things down wherever they please.

Like that's not littering?

For some reason, the sidewalk outside my building's front door hasn't been cleared of the recent snow. It was an interesting snow this time around -- one of those snows for which the Inuit likely have a specific word -- and the sidewalk is covered with a thin but tenacious layer of dry, granular snow. Pretty. Not very slippery, actually. I'm not complaining, except to say that it's festooned with discarded, now mashed, cigarette butts.

Personally, these things disgust me. Years ago, back when you could smoke in restaurants, I used to be a waiter. And the number of people who thought it was okay to put their cigarette out in the uneaten husk of their baked potato astonished me. Revolted would be a better word. Literally made me want to vomit.

And I have to clean that shit up?

A better man than me would have picked his nose and put the detritus in their cheesecake. I was too much of a coward for that level of civil disobedience.

Anyway, I look down at this lovely white sidewalk and think there should be a constitutional amendment about what one can and can't do with one's cigarette. Once you've sucked all the nutrients out of the thing.